Forecasting Seasonal Demand - When to Publish Your Articles

Posted by
Marc Bitanga
Mar 27, 2009

Why Should Writers Consider Forecasting Seasonal Demand?

Timing is everything.

For retailers, marketers and writers on the web, forecasting seasonal demand is essential. Demand for certain products, services and even information ebbs and flows with seasons, holidays and recurring events (e.g. tax season, back to school, etc.). Until recently, marketing experts had to rely on their own historical sales data and shared information from trade associations to determine when to start stocking inventory or when to begin a sales promotion.

In a similar light, online writers and journalists had to rely strongly on intuition to forecast when their articles might attract the most readership. For writers, a well-timed article can be the difference between hitting "the sweet spot" and attracting hundreds of readers or having a lackluster response in terms of traffic.

Today, Google exposes this information to anyone who's savvy and creative enough to tap into Google's search trends tool, Google Insights. We've talked about Google Insights on Suite101 but let's dig into the details of how to use this tool to forecast when an article should be published.

Can Google Really Forecast Seasonal Demand?

Let's quickly walk through why we should rely on the data that Google provides.

Google is undeniably the most popular search engine in the USA and for many international regions.

Google has 36 datacenters worldwide
In 2008, Google had a 69.5% market share of searches performed in the USA
Experts estimate that Google has over 200,000 servers
Google processes 235 million searches per day

With all this computing power, data collection & market share, Google is well equipped to forecast seasonal demand and to tell us not only what the world is searching for, but more importantly, when!

Forecasting to Determine When to Publish an Article

Let's imagine you are about to write an article related to Christmas Shopping.

Based on the 2008 Google Insights query for the keywords "Christmas Shopping" (also see graphic below), people in 2008 started to search Google for phrases including the words Christmas and Shopping beginning in September. Since you're a savvy writer and you want to take advantage of seasonal demand, you determine your article has to be published 2-3 weeks in advance of this demand. In this case, it means you should consider publishing your article in August.

Why publish a Christmas article 2-3 weeks before demand, so early in the year? For your article to have the best chance of success during the holidays, your article has to:

Be discovered by Google and added to their index. Depending on the website, it could take a matter of a few days or more than a week.
Build up the number of quality inbound links. Remember, Google's algorithm see's relevant inbound links as a major factor.

Since demand for Christmas Shopping articles begins in September, it would be best if your article was published before the rise in demand.

Three Quick Examples of Seasonal Demand

It's arguable most writers intuitively know when they should write and publish an article. "I know when spring starts, therefore I should publish when the weather starts to warm up after winter. Right?" Wrong. Remember the content requires a period of some to get indexed by search engines and also build some relevant inbound links. Publishing it at the point when perceived demand starts is probably too late.

Data is really helpful in debunking assumptions. For example:

Back to School; demand in the US begins at the start of April
Summer Vacation Ideas; surprisingly, demand begins after Christmas for this popular search query
Spring Gardening; demand in the US begins at the beginning of February

Using "Summer Vacation Ideas" as an example, if a writer were to publish her article in June, she would miss potentially thousands of readers searching for this article way back in December!

So you don't need to be a marketing analyst to determine when people want to view your content the most. With tools like Google Insights, it only takes a bit of web savvy and creativity to tap into data that could really increase your readership.